5-1 to begin the 2024-25 season, the North Tonawanda Lady Jacks’ girls basketball team is picking up where they left off a year ago following their Section VI Class AA semifinal loss to Starpoint.
In fact, they might be better than they were last year. That can be attributed to the return of Annabelle Day, who is on the verge of becoming North Tonawanda’s all-time leading scorer.
Day, a junior who originally played for the Lady Jacks as an eighth grader while helping them win the Niagara Frontier League championship, transferred to Cardinal O’Hara two years ago while following older sister Brittany. In the two years since she left, she became one of Western New York’s best guards.
Twice being named to Monsignor Martin’ first all-star team, she led the Hawks to consecutive appearances in the Catholic state tournament’s final four. After Brittany graduated from O’Hara in June, Annabelle decided to come back to North Tonawanda so she could play with her younger sister, Lilly.
“I think when she decided to come back, she saw the opportunity to become the leader of the team,” Lady Jacks coach Mike Mills said. “Anabelle also saw what Lilly did here and knew that she would fit well here. She also played with a couple of the girls in her eighth grade year like Maddie Caron and Jakayla Brown, and I think coming back home and taking on that role of being the go-to player here really appealed to her.”
“It was more of a family decision because I definitely wanted to play with Lilly,” Anabelle said following a recent game against her old teammates in which she scored 24 points. “But coming in to a team that played well together last year, I just wanted to contribute to the team culture as best as I could and really glue us together.
“I think we’re playing pretty good right now, but we still have a lot of stuff to improve on. We definitely take pride in our defensive play – we have so many players who can score and distribute the ball, but if we work on our defense and play well there we can go a long way.”
According to Mills, Annabelle has also evolved as both a player and a leader over the last few years.
“She's definitely a scorer, but what impresses me the most about her is her vision,” Mills said. “She's going to find someone when they're open, and she's going to see it every single time. Annabelle was also the one who sparked us in our opener against Lancaster and asked to kind of switch up our defense. She also said we needed to get some more energy in the game and after that she kind of took over and helped us win.
“Against Nichols a week later (a two-point win), after the game she came to me and said ‘I've got to be better and I'm going to be better.’ When we played Kenmore West a few days later, she just took the game over and stepped right into that leadership role. That’s been continuing for this little bit of a run here.”
Annabelle, who is five points away from setting the school’s new scoring record, has garnered interest from several collegiate programs, including Sienna, Le Moyne, St. Bonaventure, Canisius, New Jersey Technical Institute, Manhattan, Niagara and Wagner. While the accolades are coming in, she hasn’t given much thought to any personal achievements – all she wants to do is concentrate on her team getting better every day.
“I haven’t really thought about that at all – when I got to 1,000 career points, I didn't even want to celebrate that,” Annabelle said. “I just wanted to keep playing. I mean, it's a huge accomplishment, but at the same time I'd rather just focus on playing and winning games.
“I think the biggest thing we need to do is take the time to watch film and come together more as a team, because we’ve kind of gotten a little shaky recently. If we can learn from our start to this season and stay positive, we can accomplish a lot.”
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